


the search

by elliptical



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Denial, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Moving On, Post-Canon, Post-Update Fic, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 14:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8376472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: Terezi Pyrope bumps into two missing friends on the quest to find her moirail.





	

**Author's Note:**

> haha wow guess who never thought they'd be gutted by an update again  
> WHEN WILL I BE FREE

The first year, she waits. She tucks herself into the narrative with her friends, finds a place among her people. She watches the world grow up around them, watches trolls wander through their cities and love and lose and mostly win, they win so much more often than anyone gives them credit for, and she ponders how this is their reward. It’s different from Alternia in such a satisfying way - and there are so many people she loves, and so many people who love her, and she tries to stifle the ever-present dread in the pit of her stomach. Sometimes it works. Sometimes the joy that overcomes her is so wild, so heated and uncontrollable, that she can forget the anxious cold ever plagued her in the first place.

It’s not enough.

Vriska has always been fiercely independent, that’s the thing. She couches her neediness behind layers and layers of armor and deflection and overexaggerated confidence, and it’s hard to find the cracks. She needs someone to keep her in line, someone who has some semblance of a conscience, someone who loves her with all the viciousness that she loves herself but with the strength to tell her _no._ Terezi can be that for Vriska, but all this time, those three long years on the drafty meteor - even at the peak of her happiness, Terezi can’t shake the feeling that she needs Vriska more than Vriska needs her.

Vriska’s determination to be the hero no matter the cost… it’s going to destroy her. It might have destroyed her, but Terezi shakes off that worry whenever it becomes even close to formed. She lays awake at night and wonders where Vriska is and an image pops into her head of Vriska alone in a dead session, the hero she always wanted to be, the disgraced villain she always pretended she wasn’t.

Then Terezi throws up and spends a solid two weeks organizing the most garishly colored rave the new universe has ever seen. Colors are delicious. Parties are awesome! Worries? Haha, what worries?

Vriska wouldn’t want to be saved.

Terezi suspects the notion would make her furious, in all honesty. Vriska’s not the damsel. Vriska doesn’t need anyone, even a moirail who’d go to the ends of the universe for her.

But, well. Terezi’s got no illusions about who’s the neediest partner in their moirallegiance.

She leaves.

Time has less meaning on the edge of the universe - this much she remembers from the meteor. It’s hard to keep track of the passing seconds without having a coolkid on hand with a clock in his head. Fortunately universal Wifi is a force stronger than logic, so her family remains one button press away. She keeps in touch with them, for a certain level of the phrase - she always responds to them eventually, but she rarely initiates contact. Being completely alone is less lonely than she might have thought.

She just needs to find Vriska, that's all. There’s no way Vriska would be left behind (of course there’s a way, of course that might have been her final sacrifice, and would that finally satisfy her? Would she accept her fate as the protagonist and get some rest, or would she rail against the injustice of not having her divinity acknowledged? It’s so hard to tell where Vriska’s narcissism and insecurity separate, and Terezi's pictured a thousand unsatisfactory endings). If she finds Vriska, brings Vriska home, everything will be -

Be… what? Better? Surely Vriska is what’s missing. Terezi loves her more than anything, will not _fucking_ leave her alone. A year is long enough to wait for a dramatic entrance. If she’s hiding out at the edge of time, Terezi will drag her back kicking and screaming. Or she’ll fucking die trying. Everyone else gets their closure, a neat little end to their stories. Everyone else gets to grow up and heal and move on, until the game is a muddy memory only acknowledged in the occasional nightmare. And Terezi gets to lose, search, fret - if she just keeps moving, maybe she won’t be stuck.

If she stops moving, she might not get up again.

The solitude is peaceful even despite the misery. Misery will find her anywhere, and there’s no need to pretend for anyone when there’s no one around. If not for the vibration of the phone in her pocket, she might think that her family had forgotten her too, closed up around her absence without leaving a scar. If that was the case, she might not find reason to continue the search. But they still love her, and she still loves Vriska, and she has a mission to complete. She smells a thousand worlds collapse into themselves, ghosts fading into nothing, and that’s almost peaceful. She doesn’t want to die, but it’s still a comfort to think that time unravels eventually.

Less comforting is the worry about Vriska falling into that black hole. She scouts the edges, creeps close enough to feel the barest hint of its pull, realizes just how much she wants to live as she wrenches herself back. She casts out with her senses for signs of life beyond the unraveling ghosts, and she finds -

“TZ?”

Sollux Captor lays his hands on her face to get up to date on her appearance, because he is a silly caricature of a blind man.

A wound she’d forgotten about reopens, sheds its stitches, bleeds raw emotion everywhere. It’s not the dull ache of Vriska’s absence. It’s sharp, like her cane, like her teeth, and she tries for a fanged smile, and then she bursts into tears.

To his immense credit, Sollux is too awkward about overly emotional displays to handle them with any degree of grace. He says, “Holy shit, uh,” and then he clears his throat, and then he pulls her into a hug, and then he yells “HEY, AA, HELP ME OUT!” over her shoulder, and then Aradia Megido hugs her from behind, and Terezi’s initial plan to stop blubbering dissolves into a flood of more tears.

It’s super embarrassing! And she has way better things to do than snot on two friends who are pointedly not her moirail, but it’s been so long since she had contact with anyone, and the warmth feels good. Fuck it. She’ll go back to being Terezi Pyrope, Terrifying Potential Legislacerator of the Furthest Ring, Ghost Wrangler, Dragon Rider, and Moirail Rescue Machine in like five minutes.

Okay, so it’s probably more than five minutes, but time has little relevance here. Occasionally Sollux starts to mutter something about getting a room or asks what’s wrong, only for Aradia to shush him. Terezi feels a hell of a lot better once she’s spent herself, like the constant weight on her chest is just light enough to be bearable. She pulls away from them and wipes her eyes.

“So,” Mr. Appleberry says, the picture of eloquence, “what the fuck.”

She explains Vriska’s absence from the world, explains what she’s searching for, asks if they’ve seen her. She updates them on the lives everyone else is living, takes a selfie and sends it Johnward so the fam knows two other prodigal children have returned from the dead. It’s not a feelings jam, so she doesn’t tell them about the fear and emptiness, or about the yawning abyss of grief she’s been teetering on the edge of for years, or about the searing inadequacy that propels her forward. She does not tell them that she owes too much to the actions of a self who died in a dead timeline, and that she doesn’t know how to be that self, and that Vriska’s death is -

Vriska’s death is -

(Vriska’s not dead, there’s no need to -)

They can probably extrapolate from the crying fit she just had, anyway. Wow, that is not going to be easy to explain.

They’re quiet through her speech, patiently listening. Then Aradia takes her hand with all the gentleness in the world and says, “You’re not going to find her.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You already know you’re not going to find her, Terezi. If she could be found, she would have been. She wouldn’t wait this long to reveal herself.”

Terezi swallows, bares your teeth. “Have you seen her ghost? Seen her fall into the black hole? Unless you saw her die, she still has a chance. She wasn’t in the same place as us when we went through the door, but that doesn’t mean she - you two came through! How did you two come through? Why haven’t you gone to Earth?”

Aradia shrugs. “Didn’t feel right.”

“Objection! Insufficient detail. The court calls Sollux Captor to the stand.”

“What, like I’m gonna have some big emotional breakdown-”

“The witness is compelled to testify!”

Sollux groans. “It’s not like we’ve been part of real life for… what? Three sweeps? How are we supposed to just swoop back into domesticity? We’re all different from how we used to be.”

“We didn’t even know if you two were _alive."_

“Sorry. We weren’t trying to make anyone worry. The new planet just… wasn’t a huge priority.” He takes her other hand. “AA’s been helping out the occasional lost ghost here, and the universe is never done splintering. Someone should monitor it.”

“She’s not here, Terezi,” Aradia says, the same calm tone people use to break terminal news.

“You can’t know that!”

“I know her. And I know you. And I know you’re going to waste yourself searching until you can’t search anymore. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“It’s funny you’re judging me for coming out here, Aradia, considering you _never left."_ It comes out vicious, biting, and Terezi wants to take it back, but instead she plows on. “For someone who hates being dead, you sure aren’t doing anything to live yourself!”

Sollux snorts. “Profound.”

Terezi cuffs him over the ear.

“I’m not judging you. I just think this is… a very exaggerated form of denial. I’ve spent three sweeps helping ghosts in denial, Terezi, and there is basically no difference between you and them.”

“It’s not denial if you still have a chance!”

“There comes a time when you have to start living for yourself instead of living in the past, Terezi. You can’t keep clinging to the dead forever.”

Terezi grits her teeth. “It’s not denial if there’s a chance.”

Aradia squeezes her fingers. “Vriska made her choice. She got what she wanted. She was never going to stop until she burned herself out pretending to play hero. She got to fulfill every one of her selfish, arrogant desires. Her story is over. You need to let go or you’re going to lose yourself out here.”

“I’m not one of your ghosts,” Terezi says, stubborn.

“No.” Aradia releases her hand and strokes her arm instead, warm, wholly alive. “You still have a life to live. That’s why it’s so important you let go. This isn’t about a ghost with baggage. This is about you learning you can live without her.”

The wound continues to seep, and every breath she takes has serrated edges. “I can’t give up on her. What if I gave up and you’re wrong? What if she’s out here somewhere, waiting for me, and I-”

“If I know Vriska Serket, I know that if she’s here, she’ll find some way to make herself relevant. You don’t need to rescue her.”

“Yes, I do!” Terezi’s shouting again, which is not at all the calm legislacerator logic she’s trying to project. “It’s my fault she’s gone in the first place!”

A beat of silence. Then Sollux scoffs. “Bullshit.”

“She’s my _moirail,_ she’s my responsibility, even before the game started I let things get so out of control you _died_ and I was supposed to be the one who could keep her safe, I - I was supposed to balance her! If she ran off and played the hero and died and didn’t even think about me, how did I do any of what I was supposed to, how can you _not_ call that a failure?”

Aradia brushes a strand of hair behind Terezi’s ear. “She wasn’t your responsibility.”

“She’s my moirail!”

“The only one responsible for Vriska’s actions is Vriska. And the only one responsible for your actions is yourself. You think…” Aradia pauses, choosing her words carefully. “You think that the only reason you’re unhappy is because Vriska isn’t here. You think that finding her will fix how bad you feel. This whole thing is just a way to keep from feeling any of the pain you need to feel.”

“Aradia - you know how much I respect you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Not with this. If the universe is built on justice, then the universe is fair. It’s not _fair_ that she gets locked out of the world after she saved it, so it’s not logical.” There’s the legislacerator calm she’s been searching for. “And if I find her, I get to restore balance.”

“And that’ll make you happy?”

“It’ll make things better.”

“You’re still going to feel hurt even if she’s here.”

“You have no _idea_ what it’s like to feel like this.”

“Right.” That's Sollux, and his voice is strangely cold, detached. “Because you’re the only one who’s ever felt responsible for the death of a loved one. Even when it technically wasn’t your fault.”

Oh. Terezi doesn’t have a lot to say to that. She has been profoundly out-lawyered. “I - wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, I mean. Obviously. But that’s not the point. The point is, AA knows her shit. You’re just ignoring her to be petulant.”

Her nostrils flare, fingers twitching. “I’m not going to stop looking for Vriska.”

“Okay.” Aradia nods. “You don’t have to stop looking for her right now. But no one can fault you for taking a break. Let’s talk instead.”

Terezi’s throat clicks as she swallows. “I don’t want to talk. I have important things to do.”

“Why don’t you want to talk?”

A million excuses about feelings jams and quadrant boundaries run through her mind, but they’re all false, and she at least owes them the truth. A court case won based on lies is a court case where justice wasn’t served. The truth _matters._

“Talking fucking hurts,” she says, and flushes teal with humiliation when her voice breaks.

Neither Aradia nor Sollux fault her the vulnerability. They’ve already seen her cry herself hoarse; it’s not going to get much more emotionally charged than that. Aradia just smiles and kisses her cheek, and Terezi smells sadness on her skin.

“It’s supposed to hurt,” she says softly. “It has to hurt before it gets better.”

Terezi presses her palms against her eyes and laughs, sharp, watery. “This is the worst. I'm putting forward a motion to sue every emotional receptor in my body.”

“Aha! Motion granted, but to move forward you need to testify about the damage the emotional receptors are doing.” Aradia kisses her forehead.

“That is some sneaky lawyer lingo, Megido.”

“Talk.”

Terezi breathes out. Then she draws Sollux and Aradia into her arms, embracing the warmth, the softness, the thrum of their _life._ She shudders, braces herself, and reaches into the wound.

She speaks.


End file.
